From Switzerland to China, the peasants are the real occupiers of the land. The right of conquest alone has, in some countries, deprived men of a right so natural.

The general advantage or good of a nation is that of the sovereign, of the magistrate, and of the people, both in peace and war. Is this possession of lands by the peasantry equally conducive to the prosperity of the throne and the people in all periods and circumstances? In order to its being the most beneficial system for the throne, it must be that which produces the most considerable revenue, and the most numerous and powerful army.

We must enquire therefore, whether this principle or plan tends clearly to increase commerce and population. It is certain, that the possessor of an estate will cultivate his own inheritance better than that of another. The spirit of property doubles a man's strength. He labours for himself and his family both with more vigour and pleasure than he would for a master. The slave, who is in the power of another, has but little inclination for marriage: he often shudders even at the thought of producing slaves like himself. His industry is damped; his soul is brutalised; and his strength is never exercised in its full energy and elasticity. The possessor of property, on the contrary, desires a wife to share his happiness, and children to assist in his labours. His wife and children constitute his wealth. The estate of such a cultivator, under the hands of an active and willing family, may become ten times more productive than it was before. The general commerce will be increased. The treasure of the

prince will accumulate. The country will supply more soldiers. It is clear therefore, that the system is beneficial to the prince. Poland would be thrice as populous and wealthy as it is at present, if the peasants were not slaves.

Nor is the system less beneficial to the great landlords.

*It is to be feared that such is not frequently the case; it would be well if it were.-T.

If we suppose one of these to possess ten thousand acres of land cultivated by serfs, these ten thousand acres will produce him but a very scanty revenue, which will be frequently absorbed in repairs, and reduIced to nothing by the irregularity and severity of the seasons. What will he in fact be, although his estates may be vastly more extensive than we have mentioned, if at the same time they are unproductive? He will be merely the possessor of an immense solitude. He will never be really rich but in proportion as his vassals are so; his prosperity depends on theirs. If this prosperity advances so far as to render the land too populous; if land is wanting to employ the labour of so many industrious hands-as hands in the first instance were wanting to cultivate the land-then the superfluity of necessary labourers will flow off into cities and sea-ports, into manufactories and armies. Population will have produced this decided benefit, and the possession of the lands by the real cultivators, under payment of a rent which enriches the landlords, will have been the cause of this increase of population.

There is another species of property not less beneficial; it is that which is freed from payment of rent altogether, and which is liable only to those general imposts which are levied by the sovereign for the support and benefit of the state. It is this property which has contributed in a particular manner to the wealth of England, of France, and the free cities of Germany. The sovereigns who thus enfranchised the lands which constituted their domains, derived, in the first instance, vast advantage from so doing by the franchises which they disposed of being eagerly purchased at high prices; and they derive from it, even at the present day, a greater advantage still, especially in France and England, by the progress of industry and commerce.

England furnished a grand example to the sixteenth century, by enfranchising the lands possessed by the church and the monks. Nothing could be more odious and nothing more pernicious than the before prevailing practice of men, who had voluntarily bound themselves, by the rules of their order, to a life of humility and

poverty, becoming complete masters of the very finest estates in the kingdom, and treating their brethren of mankind as mere useful animals, as no better than beasts to bear their burdens. The state and opulence of this small number of priests degraded human nature; their appropriated and accumulated wealth impoverished the rest of the kingdom. The abuse was destroyed, and England became rich.

In all the rest of Europe, commerce has never flourished; the arts have never attained estimation and honour, and cities have never advanced both in extent and embellishment, except when the serfs of the crown and the church held their lands in property. And it is deserving of attentive remark, that if the church thus lost rights, which in fact never truly belonged to it, the crown gained an extension of its legitimate rights; for the church, whose first obligation and professed principle it is to imitate its great legislator in humility and poverty, was not originally instituted to fatten and aggrandise itself upon the fruit of the labours of mankind; and the sovereign, who is the representative of the state, is bound to manage with economy the produce of that same labour for the good of the state itself, and for the splendour of the throne. In every country where the people labour for the church, the state is poor; but wherever they labour for themselves and the sovereign, the state is rich.

It is in these circumstances that commerce everywhere extends its branches. The mercantile navy becomes a school for the warlike navy. Great commercial companies are formed. The sovereign finds in periods of difficulty and danger resources before unknown. Accordingly, in the Austrian states, in England, and in France, we see the prince easily borrowing from his subjects an hundred times more than he could obtain by force while the people were bent down to the earth in slavery.

All the peasants will not be rich, nor is it necessary that they should be so. The state requires men who possess nothing but strength and good will. Even

rest.

such however who appear to many as the very outcasts of fortune, will participate in the prosperity of the They will be free to dispose of their labour at the best market, and this freedom will be an effective substitute for property. The assured hope of adequate wages will support their spirits, and they will bring up their families in their own laborious and serviceable occupations with success, and even with gaiety. It is this class, so despised by the great and opulent, that constitutes, be it remembered, the nursery for soldiers. Thus, from kings to shepherds, from the sceptre to the scythe, all is animation and prosperity, and the principle in question gives new force to every exertion.

After having ascertained whether it is beneficial to a state that the cultivators should be proprietors, it remains to be shown how far this principle may be properly carried. It has happened in more kingdoms than one, that the emancipated serf has attained such wealth by his skill and industry as has enabled him to occupy the station of his former masters, who have become reduced and impoverished by their luxury. He has purchased their lands and assumed their titles; the old noblesse have been degraded, and the new have been only envied and despised. Everything has been thrown into confusion. Those nations which have permitted such usurpations have been the sport and scorn of such as have secured themselves against an evil so baneful.

The errors of one government may become a lesson for others. They profit by its wise and salutary institutions; they may avoid the evil it has incurred through those of an opposite tendency.

It is so easy to oppose the restrictions of law to the cupidity and arrogance of upstart proprietors, to fix the extent of lands which wealthy plebeians may be allowed to purchase, to prevent their acquisition of large seignorial property and privileges, that a firm

The two last-mentioned restrictions would be decidedly unjust. But should a government be desirous of preventing the too great inequality of riches, and yet not feel itself sufficiently strong or not be sufficiently wise to abolish at once entails and rights of

and wise government can never have cause to repent of having enfranchised servitude and enriched indigence. A good is never productive of evil but when it is carried to a culpable excess, in which case it completely ceases to be a good. The examples of other nations supply a warning; and upon this principle it is easy to explain why those communities which have most recently attained civilization and regular government, frequently surpass the masters from whom they drew their lessons.*

PROPHECIES.

SECTION I.

THIS word in its ordinary acceptation signifies preIdiction of the future. It is in this sense that Jesus said to his disciples-" That all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures.+"

We shall feel the indispensable necessity of having our minds opened to comprehend the prophecies, if we reflect that the Jews, who were the depositories of them, could never recognise Jesus for the messiah, and that for eighteen centuries our theologians have disputed with them to fix the sense of some which they endeavour to apply to Jesus. Such is that of Jacob: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come." That of Moses: "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet like unto me from the nations and from thy brethren; unto him shall ye hearken.§" That of Isaiah: primogeniture, the privileges in question might be confined to the fiefs possessed by the ancient or titled nobility. This would at least be acting consistently, though upon a vicious principle—that of making distinctions in favour of particular elasses of the community.-French Ed.

*Happily, the general reasoning in this article is no longer required by France; and it even appears that Prussia has been recently acting in the spirit of it.-T.

St. Luke, xxiv. 44, 45. Gen. xlix. 10. § Deut. xviii. 15.